Life

Life determines how hard a character is to kill, and is presented in points (which are usually represented in bars). A Hunter or an enemy with zero Life is dead.

"Life" is usually referred to as "Health", even though technically Health is just the most common one of the 3 types of Life.

Life Types
There are 3 types of Life in Relic Hunters Legend:

Health
Health is the most common type of Life. It has no special traits, nor is it immune or resistant to any particular type of damage. It is represented by red Life bars.

Armor
Armor is a bulky and resistant type of Life. It is represented by yellow Life bars.

Armor is completely immune to Critical Hit damage, and reduces damage taken from all sources.

It takes 1.5 points of damage to remove 1 point of Armor.

If a character runs out of Armor but still has Health points left, any exceeding damage points apply to Health normally.

Shields
Shields are a rare type of Life that automatically regenerate. Even though Shields usually come in much less quantity than Armor or Health, the added sustain makes up for it.

Shields are completely immune to extra damage from Precision hits.

Shields are completely immune to Condition triggers.

If a character is already suffering from Conditions, however, Shields will not remove those Conditions.

Shields start regenerating after 3 seconds without taking damage. This is a universal timer that applies to all shields unless modified by Gear or Skill effects.

After the 3-second period, the Shield Regen Rate and Shield Regen Rate% stats determine how fast the Shield points are recovered.

Taking any damage during either the 3-second period or the regeneration period will reset the whole process.

Life Bars
Life points are visually represented by Life Bars, either on top of characters' heads or on the HUD (Heads-Up Display). Each little notch on the bar represents roughly 20 points of Life.

It is not an exact representation because the notches can't be partially drawn - they are either there or they are not. They serve as a "ballpark" so that players can judge the overall amount of Life of a character at a quick glance.

The notches try to round up to the nearest multiple of 20, but they have a bias towards drawing at least one per Life type. This means that a character with 1 point of Armor and 1 point of Shields will have their Life represented by a yellow notch and a blue notch - even though those values are nowhere near 20!